The Driving Engine

How the Classification & Inmate Transportation Division Drives TDCJ Forward

Approximately 141,000 incarcerated individuals are spread all around the Lone Star State (between 104 units and the Classification and Inmate Transportation Division (CITD) oversees the movement and placement of them all.

CITD manages all administrative aspects of incarceration from intake to release and is comprised of 21 departments within nine areas: Inmate Time Management, Classification Operations, State Classification, Mail System Coordinators Panel, Records, Fiscal, Disciplinary Coordination, Administration and Inmate Transportation.

Meet the Classification Inmate Transportation Division

“If the agency is a car, then CITD is the engine,” CITD Director Richard Babcock said. He explained that the intake process is initiated when CITD’s State Ready Department receives a penitentiary packet (or pen packet, as they are commonly known) from a Texas county jail. Pen packets contain the relevant information needed to assess an individual’s needs to place them in the best facility, taking into consideration sentencing, psychological and health needs, the releasing county, and any rehabilitative programs required, such as substance use recovery programs.

Once pen packets are approved, inmates are scheduled for intake. The State Ready Department receives the packets by mail, fax or email, where each one is then screened. Inmates coming from county jails are transported to intake facilities, where they are photographed, have their property inventoried and are given educational, medical and psychological evaluations.

A significant portion of CITD’s responsibilities is inmate transportation. There are a lot of moving parts and coordination as individuals are transported from county jails to TDCJ facilities, or for any unit transfers and medical appointments. CITD oversees an inmate’s custody all the way through their incarceration. Understandably, these extra responsibilities add complexity to an inmate’s journey. Each case is unique, as each inmate has his or her own needs to be met.

To better illustrate this, Babcock drew lines on the whiteboard in his office, with each line representing one part of a hypothetical inmate’s journey while in custody: a long blue streak to represent a medical transport from Huntsville to Galveston, another line for the trek back on a different bus or van, a third to transfer him to a location with cool beds to meet changes in his physical health, and several more to represent other theoretical journeys and status and need changes. When he finally stepped back from the board, all the lines sat on top of one another like loose spaghetti strands.

Currently, these transports are done on an as-needed basis, which may cause inefficiencies such as not having enough drivers, fuel usage and more wear and tear on TDCJ transport vehicles.

“For example, when I was a lieutenant at the Allred Unit working at their motor pool, we put 90,000 miles on a transport vehicle in a short period of time,” Caleb Turner, Chairman of CITD’s State Classification Committee said.

For medical appointments, transportation drops inmates off at their destinations and then the officers return to their hubs. After their appointments, it is common for an inmate to wait for the next bus or van to arrive with a new group of individuals with appointments.

Babcock explained why this practice is so common.

“It grew over time. At one point, when there were fewer units, there weren’t as many facilities that offered specific programs or that did intake or release. It sprawled across the state and our transport routes sprawled along with it.” He continued, “Now, multiply this concept by more than 100,000 inmates who all have their own histories and needs, and you see the picture more clearly.”

The road doesn’t end there, however; as he explained the ongoing process to modernize procedures through regionalization. The vision for CITD will bring more treatment and rehabilitative programs to regions across the state, decreasing the number of transfers an inmate makes while in custody and the number of staff needing to be pulled away from their units. CITD’s regionalization has been an effort in development for the last nine months, working with the Rehabilitation and Reentry Division and creating new programs at more facilities.

For an inmate coming in from a county jail, the road starts with arriving at intake.

Intake’s job is crucial because the information collected is added to their classification profile – things such as security risk level, previous assault history or escape attempts are vital for the safety and security staff.

The information gathered is what the State Classification Committee uses to make decisions on custody levels, trusty eligibility and an inmate’s unit of assignment or transfer.

State Classification Committee's Impact

Adding to Babcock’s earlier sentiments about CITD, Turner said, “If CITD is the agency’s engine, then SCC is its electronic control unit.”

The SCC is a team of 15 highly skilled individuals with tenured experience in classification, many of whom were previously unit chiefs of classification. Turner likened their role to a game of 3D chess.

“They are the chess masters, playing a game of 3D chess with additional layers and many variables to consider simultaneously. They are playing with 103 chess boards and more than 104,000 game pieces,” Turner said. “It’s up to the 15 of them to strategize and make the right moves for the right people at the right time.”

Turner also described the SCC as a team of dedicated problem solvers.

“They care, and they never complain. There are many times they will be here long after 5 p.m.; they don’t leave until the job is done because they understand the cascading effects of their roles and decisions. They are driven and understand the impact their work has on public safety, and I am always learning from their expertise.”

He added that CITD's progress towards regionalization will greatly impact the SCC.

“It’s all about efficiency. The current system is old and has many manual entries and several different Micro Focus screens to reference for each decision.” He said, “Mr. Babcock has been working very closely with the Office of Strategic Initiatives and Modernization (OSIM), developing programs such as one for trusty reviews. In the past, the SCC must go searching for eligible inmates out of the entire population and would find a couple hundred after many hours of manual searches. OSIM can perform a data pull based on SCC specified criteria, which gave us an initial list of 5,300 eligible inmates, 1,100 of which we were able to approve in a fraction of the time it would take manually, and with a larger pool.”

Turner continued to describe the SCC’s current workload. “We have, for example, 800 inmates coming in from the county jails that we must find placement for, so the team goes to work on what facility to send them to. Then the units call and let us know that they can only take so many of the ones we want to send due to factors like cool bed availability or how close the unit is to being at capacity – so then it’s back to the drawing board.”

He adds that capacity is always a concern. “We can only house 96 percent capacity legally. Some units on the smaller side could be 10 beds away from being at capacity. Others could be a couple hundred.” Turner continued, “If the SCC team miscalculates and sends 40 inmates to a unit that has already met its capacity, that is now 40 people we must find accommodations for. This is why sometimes you’ll see cars in the parking lot here at 6 or 7 p.m. at night.”

Next Stop – Modernization

The effort towards regionalization would provide a much-needed tune-up to the proverbial engine – bringing more rehabilitative programs to more facilities in each region, consolidating individuals with similar needs or conditions, resulting in fewer vacant seats on busses while being better equipped to meet transportation demands.

In conclusion, the path forward on the road to modernization has different implications for everyone affected by the CITD’s changes. For inmates, regionalization means the programs and medical accommodations they need would be in the region they were convicted near – close to home, their families and community, which is crucial for reducing recidivism rates. For intake and release staff, it means working with a population that is originally from or near that region and will be released into a nearby county – improving logistics and streamlining workflow. For the hardworking men and women within CITD, it means gaining the upper hand in their ongoing 3D chess match and ultimately being one move closer to a job well done.

The cost saving benefits of CITD’s plan for regionalization cannot be understated.

Bringing more programs and services to every region means the division will be able to transition from a large fleet of high-capacity busses to eventually smaller fleets of vans and will decrease the number of hours security staff and inmates must travel, not to mention the cost of fuel and vehicle maintenance. Developing software applications to assist in finding and grouping those with certain eligibility or demographics together means modernizing the work of the SCC – driving efficiency and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice forward.